a collection of words about God and life and art and baseball and football and hope and my family and my ministry and music and the immense joy in each moment of all of it. it's a record of being human. welcome.

Search This Blog

things i love: warmth, class, and certain kinds of paper

the kids have a 2-hour delay this morning because of the cold temps, so i took a picture from our front window of the front lawn this morning..

a little creepy that he's smiling and waving, but i guess that's just him mocking us, saying, "it feels like 14 below zero out here, wanna come outside for a snow cone?"

brrrrrrrr.

also this: i'm ready for spring. i feel like i usually am able to delay this feeling until mid-february, but not this year. i want spring and i want it now. i have had quite enough of mr. winter, thank you very much, what with his gray-black snow and tracking salt from your shoes into the house and your vehicles looking like you dipped them in gray paint. enough!

....

i watched some of the grammys on sunday night. it started at 8pm with beyonce girating around half-naked as if she was at one of the establishments that operate near truck stops. i was glad my children weren't watching, but i was wondering how many were, and i was thinking about miley cyrus and how everyone freaked out, and how this really didn't seem too different to me. i love art, and i love how music can be the very best kind of art, but so much of what the grammys seemed to be selling/celebrating often felt less like art and more like something cheap. there was some interesting stuff, too, but it is often disappointing to me to see the state of american popular music.

...

i am certainly not a technophobe, and i often welcome many of the changes that come with technology, including ways that we can save on paper. but when it comes to books, i am old school. i like the feel of a book, the smell of the paper, the option of writing in my own handwriting in the margins. and when it comes to certain other kinds of paper, well, let's just say there are times when the ipad just doesn't touch it, as this video will humorously demonstrate:

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

here's the thing...i feel like the world needs more affirmation and encouragement. the world needs more positivity, more joy, more love. and while i can't change "the world," i can change the way i act and the things i do. so i have decided to start telling people how awesome they are. and i think it is important to do some of that in a public way. so, here is a (slightly edited) letter i sent to our sons' elementary school principal. he is awesome. i hope it inspires you to tell someone how awesome they are, too. and be awesome, yourself.

Mr. Feldman,

I wanted to send you a quick note just to offer some affirmation, gratitude, and maybe even encouragement. I believe that SCASD is a great school district, but I also know that being in public education can be a tough gig these days. I admire teachers and administrators, especially when they do their job as a vocation, with passion and conviction. This I see in you. I will name three things I have per…

so here's the thing: i call myself a Christian. actually, i don't even use that word as much anymore, because it ends up being a wedge between me and many other people as soon as i use it. instead, i like to say that i'm a Christ-follower (which is closer to the way the very first Christ-followers talked about it anyway). to be a Christ-follower is to - wait for it - follow Christ. i know, surprising, right?

well, it shouldn't be a shock to us that being a Christ-follower, or a Christian, means following Christ, but in America in 2018 calling yourself a Christian often has far too little to do with actually following Jesus. when people call themselves Christians in america today, they may mean any number of things, such as:
-i went to a church sometimes when i grew up;
-i once got 'saved' at a christian camp or crusade;
-i believe in God;
-i am in favor of traditional american evangelical political positions;
-i say merry christmas instead of happy holid…

my friends, this unparalleled woman is celebrating a birthday today, and i cannot help but stop and say thanks that she was born. every once in a while i imagine my life without her, and it is a dark and grim vision. in this vision, there are no children living in my house, no voices singing opera from the shower, no kids books strewn across the living room. in this vision, i eat spaghetti-o's from a can for dinner every night, and i am stuck in every rut i've ever gotten into. in this terrifying vision the color of everything is gray, music sounds like a monotonous drone, and everything feels like long, cold nights.

but she was born!

and somehow our paths were blessed to cross, and somehow i was able to convince her that spending her life with me wouldn't be as awful as it might have seemed, and somehow these last 19 years feel like the blink of an eye; like a colorful, melodic, sun-drenched, joy-filled, broken-but-blessed blink-of-an-eye journey. all because on th…